63 years after the UN Resolution for the partition of Palestine and 43 years after the occupation of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the Golan Heights in Syria, Israel still continues its project of ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population, which was started in 1947.

The dozens of Resolutions which have been issued by the UN since 1948 condemning Israel’s colonial and racist policies have never been respected. Following the Palestinian elections in 2006, which were regularly and democratically won by the party “Change and Reform” (Hamas), the state of Israel has, with the complicity of the Western world, implemented a ferocious siege of the Gaza Strip, reducing one million five hundred thousand people to a bare survival in the framework of a policy of genocide which, in January, led to the massacre of over 1,400 Palestinians.

The Israeli army used all kinds of weapons, like white phosphorus bombs, and also experimented with new devastating weapons, as UN organizations reported. Within the State of Israel a hateful legislation is being strengthened on racial discrimination against Palestinians living in Israel.

In this context, the Israeli universities and academics have almost totally supported and support their government and are accomplices to its policies.

The Israeli universities are also the places where some of the most important research projects are carried out on new weapons based on nanotechnology and technological and psychological systems to control and oppress the civil population.

We, lecturers at Italian universities, students, intellectuals, artists, cultural operators and activists of civil society, are fully aware that the international community must intervene to end the ceaseless violation of human rights of the Palestinian people by

Israel, we cannot continue to remain silent and ask our colleagues to support the appeal of PACBI, Palestinian Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, and to take part in launching the campaign for the academic and cultural boycott of Israel, which has been implemented by many countries, in particular by the UK through the BRICUP (British Committee for the Universities of Palestine).

This boycott must be upheld until Israel accepts to recognize the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to their self-determination, and until it fully respects the obligations imposed by international law:

1. Ending its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and dismantling the Wall;

2. Recognizing the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and

3. Respecting, protecting and promoting the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.

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